Tag Archives: ISTE 2017

Anyone who attended Jennie Magiera’s (@msmagiera) keynote at ISTE 2017 will be forever changed by her inspirational address. It is not officially posted yet, but you can view the whole presentation on this Periscope provided by @1to1Brian. (Jennie’s part begins about 25 minutes in, but the beginning is worth watching as well.)

Jennie focused on stories – the ones we tell and the ones we don’t tell. She took us back to when she encountered one of her most inspirational teachers, Ms. Buckman, who started the school year by encouraging her students to look for her lost pet dinosaur, Jeff, and eventually exclaimed, “Look at the time. We’re already late for our adventure!”

Can you imagine the excitement your students would have in a classroom like that?

Jennie compares those of us who attempt to be innovative educators to the wizard Gandalf in The Hobbit – always trying to encourage the reticent to leave the safety of “what has always been” to embark on adventures. But, she reminds us with an ancient story of a dragon, that those colleagues have other concerns – and they may need to resolve some pre-existing challenges before they can consider taking new risks.

We don’t really know each other. We don’t know our students, and we don’t know our peers. Social media tends to reveal only the better parts of ourselves – unintentionally intimidating anyone who is fearful of making mistakes. We need to be better at telling the whole story, and about discovering it in others. Technology can be used to amplify the voices of those who feel like they are never heard or understood, and to reassure others that while adventure is worthwhile, it is usually difficult and sometimes spawns unpredictable negative consequences – that we can make it through with the support of others.

I am not as eloquent as Jennie, so I encourage you to watch the Periscope linked above (for which she received a standing ovation). My hope is that every school will show her presentation to its teachers before the beginning of the new school year. They will be energized and motivated to look for untold stories that must be shared, develop deeper relationships with colleagues and students, and to undertake new adventures.

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When it comes to math and mindset, there are two #eduheroes I refer to on a regular basis: Dr. Jo Boaler, who is a professor at Stanford and the genius behind the YouCubed website, and Alice Keeler, who many know to be a Google wizard but also has a published book called, Teaching Math with Google Apps: 50 G Suite Activities. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I learned that they would be presenting a session together at ISTE. (Dr. Boaler joined us through Google Hangouts).

Dr. Boaler wrote the book, Mathematical Mindsets. Not surprisingly, it includes a foreword by Carol Dweck, the leading expert on growth and fixed mindsets. Dr. Boaler’s main points are that we need to value the different ways that people see math and have more class discussions about math – rather than repetitive questions on worksheets. According to her research, people become proficient in mathematics when their brains have the opportunity to make connections between visual and numerical representations – not because they are born “math people.” The least effective way to teach math is through lecture, while the most effective is with Project and Problem Based Learning.

Both Boaler and Keeler agree that we need to dispel the myth that those who can do math quickly are better thinkers than those who reason through problems. In fact, Boaler says, “I’m unimpressed that you worked through it quickly because that tells me that you are not thinking deeply.”

Another controversial topic we all agree on – homework. Recent studies have shown that assigning elementary students homework is ineffective. Boaler and Keeler (and I agree) both believe that this is true for all ages, particularly when the homework is a worksheet of repetitive practice. A better way to think about math is to do an activity like the one below, where students think about one problem in multiple ways.

When an audience member asked about the problem of spending time on conversing about math when there is a scope and sequence to follow, both Keeler and Boaler expressed the feeling that it is actually a waste of time to “plow through” topics despite lack of understanding. In Boaler’s words, “Pacing guides are the worst evil in education.” Amen!

Overall, I was so energized by this session that I was tripping over my words when I debriefed with my colleagues that evening. I had stayed later just to attend this session, and it was definitely worth my time. Thank you, Alice Keeler and Jo Boaler!

I want to close this post by helping Alice Keeler to honor her book’s co-author, Diana Herrington, a passionate math teacher who recently passed. You can read more about Diana and her influence on Alice Keeler here. One of many great quotes from Diana Herrington on Twitter collected by Alice Keeler is, ““I teach students not math.”

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Last week I mentioned that one of the best parts of attending ISTE is meeting up with people who share our desire to make school amazing for our students. One of those people is Andi McNairan (@mcnairan3).

Until recently, Andi taught gifted students (she now works for a regional service center), and also integrated Genius Hour into her classroom. We would touch base with each other to share ideas, read each other’s blogs, and try to meet up at TCEA whenever we could.

Andi recently published a book, called, Genius Hour: Passion Projects that Ignite Innovation and Student Inquiry. In the book, and in her ISTE presentation, Andi talks about the “6 P’s of Genius Hour”: Passion, Presentation, Pitch, Product, Project, and Plan. At ISTE, Andi went over some of the tech tools that have helped her students in each of these areas. For example, she provides the students with QR codes for each of the phases. They can scan these and instantly be on a web page that gives instructions and resources for that phase. Because Andi also thinks that reflection is vital, she gives the students a QR code that leads to Tony Vincent’s reflection generator – which offers a randomly selected reflection question each time you visit the page.

Do you have students who have difficulty coming up with topics for Genius Hour? Andi suggests using A.J. Juliani’s “Passion Bracket” to help them brainstorm. On one side, students brainstorm things that they love, and on the other they think about things that bother them. By the time they reach the middle, narrowing down favorites, they have potential topics for research.

A favorite tool of Andi’s that I keep meaning to try is Trello. Trello can be used by the individual students to keep track of their own progress, but it can also be used by the instructor to determine what phase each student is currently working on. The name blocks under each category can be easily dragged to a new column.

Andi and I are both keen on students interviewing outside experts for their projects. To find those experts, she suggests using Nepris, which matches classroom teachers with industry experts for video conferences. Like many edtech companies these days, Nepris has limited free options and a subscription option. One great tip that I learned from Andi is to have the students record their interviews, so they don’t have to take notes. This frees them up to look at the person they are conferencing with, and to pay attention to the topics. She also mentioned that she has the students prioritize their questions before the interview in case not everything can be covered during their 30 minute time period.

You can find out more about Andi’s extremely helpful tips by visiting her website – appropriately titled, A Meaningful Mess – or purchasing her book.

For more Genius Hour resources, here is my page that includes helpful links, my own personal journey with Genius Hour, and some downloadable activities.

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As pretty much anyone who attends an ISTE conference will tell you, one of the most important features of the entire event is the connections that you make. With the explosion of social media many educators have been able to find like-minded colleagues around the globe through Twitter chats, Facebook Posts, or blogging. But when 20,000 of these people convene in a single city, these bonds can be strengthened as we get to meet each other in-person.

Two of the people I was fortunate to meet up with this week happen to be 2/3 of the storymamas team, Kim and Ashley. These two, along with their friend Courtney, are the women behind the storymamas blog, a site dedicated to sharing book recommendations for children. The three all have elementary school experience, and coincidentally they each have 2 children. (Did you have the second one three months ago, Kim, just to even things out?) As soon as I met Kim and Ashley, I knew that we all shared the same passion for reading and education, which definitely makes this an ISTE connection worth celebrating. If I could just get them in the same room with my Twitter/Blog pal, Joelle Trayers, I think we might become a new alternative source of energy 😉

What is great about storymamas (besides the cool people who created it) is that the blog is a great resource for busy teachers and mothers who are looking for new children’s literature. Now that my daughter is a teenager and stubbornly choosing to decide her own reading materials, I don’t find myself in the children’s book section very often. It’s nice to have another place to get ideas for books to use with my younger grade levels. I also like that they include author interviews on the blog with 3 questions about the story and 3 questions about the author.

So, want great new book ideas and insights into what makes writers tick? Check out storymamas. You can also find them on Twitter and Instagram at @storymamas, #storymamasbookaday & #authorsaturday

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Monday at ISTE began with me frantically trying to find my first session in the San Antonio Convention Center (not an easy place to navigate – especially for those of us who are spatially challenged), only to discover that I needed a ticket to enter. Fortunately, it was the one Apple morning session that wasn’t full, so I boomeranged between the usher at the entrance and the ticket stand with admirable speed and found myself one of the last people to be welcomed into a hands-on session centered on Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app.

I still stand by my original assertion that students need to be pretty adept readers to take advantage of the app, and I wouldn’t use it with students with lower than a 4th grade reading level. However, the new “Accessories” tab that allows it to be used to control multiple hardware devices may be a game-changer. For example, my students could now control Lego EV3, Dash Robots, and Sphero, among other robots, using Swift Playgrounds. The advantage of this over other apps, such as Tickle, is that students will be switching from introductory block programming to more widely used line/text programming. There are plenty of tutorials within the app to ease this transition.

Another feature that I like about Swift Playgrounds is that it offers a recording function, so students can work on a tutorial and submit recordings of their solutions to the teacher as a reflection. You can also take pictures of your screen within the app, and export the code to PDF. There are hints within the tutorials, but later levels require that you put a little effort into solving the coding puzzles before you can receive any help. The app is definitely worth looking into if you are an educator working with students who already have some programming experience and are looking for the next step. Curriculum resources are available here.

My second session also happened to be sponsored by Apple (no ticket required for this one). In this session, we learned about Apple Clips, which is a video editing app that may eventually replace iMovie. This app is optimized for mobile use, as well as social media, and it is clear there was a lot of thought put into its development. Just like iMovie, Clips allows you to take video, edit it, and add music. But Clips has taken a lot of the manual labor out of video creation. Music is automatically edited with intros and outros to fit your clips. Cropping and “Ken Burns-ing” easily become seamless portions of your video, and you can add layers, effects, and titles with taps of the finger. One of my favorite features is the “live titles.” This basically allows you to create a closed-captions for your video – adding text to the video as you record in real time. The text is aligned to the actual timing of your speech, so if you pause, so does the text. You can also easily edit the text if your words aren’t interpreted the way you intended.

Clips looks great. Designed for this generation of “on-the-fly” videographers, it could be the ideal tool. However, I have heard from a few people and read in some reviews that it can be glitchy. I have not experienced any issues myself, but I was disappointed when my somewhat older classroom iPad was deemed too ancient to be “compatible with this app.” Like many new products, Clips may need to age a bit (but maybe not as much as my unfortunate iPad) before it takes off, but I’m ready to give it a try.

For some examples of ways that Clips has been used in schools, check out #classroomclips on Twitter.

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In the opening keynote of ISTE 2017, Jad Abumrad, creator and co-host of RadioLab, spoke about the creative process. He reminded us that all creators regularly oscillate between excitement and self-doubt. As Abumrad described some of his experiences developing stories for the RadioLab podcast, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the many Genius Hour projects I’ve done my best to facilitate over the years. Beginning with brainstorming questions, selecting one that resonates, researching the question, and running into obstacles, RadioLab is the embodiment of my students’ attempts to complete their quests for answers. And, just as my students sometimes run into perceived dead ends, so do the hosts of RadioLab. But by paying close attention, they may find paths that lead to something even better. As Abumrad says, “If you commit to the questions, you probably will not get to where you want to go, but you could get somewhere else. And it could be beautiful.” (This is why I think it’s important to tell students to “Get Lost” and advocate for Trailblazing.)

Our job as educators is to not only help our students “navigate uncertainty,” but to teach them to seek it out. Abumrad calls this, “The German Forest,” (based on an extremely difficult story he pursued regarding Wagner’s “Ring Cycle”). Going into the forest is always intimidating, yet exhilarating when you are able to make it to the other side. The more often you subject yourself to this, the better equipped you will be. Though the trials may never get easier, you will be able to reassure yourself that you have encountered this before – and succeeded.

During his presentation, Abumrad showed a favorite video of mine that features Ira Glass speaking about storytelling. Glass’ German Forest is “The Gap,” and it can only be bridged by constantly creating and endlessly honing your craft.

These are the lessons that we must impart to our children:

Seek out what interests you, and be willing to take it where it leads you – even if that is not what you envisioned

Take calculated risks

It is normal to be uncertain, and to question your abilities

Allow self-doubt to guide you to improvement rather than to stop you from trying